The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies of historical writing, which the royal authority used to integrate autonomous nobility into medieval French nation. The earliest products of the movement toward vernacular historiography were the works of aristocratic patrons who were experiencing reversals in their political fortunes due to the revival of a moneyed economy and the growth of royal centralization. The appearance of the multivolume Grandes chroniques de France, which was completed by Primat around 1274, signals the overt contest over the past between Capetien kings and French nobility. By the last third of the thirteenth century, historiography in Old French was successfully established in the France of the Capetian dynasty. In the texts of Grandes chroniques de France, Primat accorded a large place to the nobility. This fact lends to the conclusion that, Capetien dynasty absorbs and revalorizes the terms and language of the nobility for their own purposes, creating a vast corpus of historical writing to establish the legitimacy of their rule over their former antagonists.